


Chiaroscuro

by Crollalanza



Series: Chikara/Keiji series [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 17:24:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2858921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crollalanza/pseuds/Crollalanza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about beauty, Chikara’s worked out, is that after a while it becomes the same as everything else. Shimizu-san will always be beautiful, but ... but ... it’s like staring at your reflection in a mirror, stare for too long and the face becomes a blur. Every face becomes a fuzz of colours, no longer delineated - smudged. </p><p>And then he sees him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chiaroscuro

**Author's Note:**

> This has been written for Ennoshita Chikara's birthday - yay!
> 
> But the inspiration for the tale was from electric-prince on tumblr. Thank you for introducing me to the possibilities of this ship. :)

Sometimes he stares at himself in the mirror and wonders how others view him.  What looks back at him is a pleasant face, a nothing face comprising short, neat black hair, a nose not overlarge, lips not overfull or too thin, and brown eyes with heavy lids that make him look half-asleep. He used to be told to wake up quite a lot at school; the teachers would even shake him by the shoulders. Old Coach Ukai would shout louder, thinking he had to liven up the sapling in front of him. His expression emphasises their expectation that Ennoshita Chikara is a slacker.  But they soon find out they’re wrong – even Ukai discovered that- because Chikara concentrates hard, analyses everything around him, and makes decisions based on every available piece of data.

(The decision to walk – run - away from volleyball was an exception to the rule. The decision to return was another exception, a time when his heart truly ruled his head as he ached to feel again.)

It’s a cliché, but the reason he likes being behind the camera is because he has neither beauty nor interest in his face, so no one would want to look at him.

Chikara doesn’t see colour – not the way others do. It isn’t that he’s colour-blind. He doesn’t view the world in monochrome, or see red and green as one muggy shade of brown. But colour isn’t the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes, or when he looks on something new. What Chikara first notices about a place, or an object is the light and shade, how the shadows play out, disguising or emphasising ugliness.  Or beauty.

Chiaroscuro. It is a word his art teacher bandies about in class, exhorting all her students to experiment. Most of the class don’t understand, at first, but Chikara does. And his eyes widen when he realises that he’s been viewing the world that way since before he knew there was a word.  Chiaroscuro becomes something beautiful to him, and he lets it melt on his lips.

He can distinguish shadows, so when he sees players on the opposing side of the court jumping, Chikara can tell which one has raised his hand, which one jumped first and which one will duck out, just by watching the grey shapes as they form then fly. He wonders if he can calculate how fast Seijou’s ace will spike a ball by watching the grey shade take a run up. Or if the Grand King’s serve will strengthen as his shadow elongates when he leaps into the air.

Not that he has a chance to put any of this into practise. Chikara stays on the sidelines, watching his teammates, the guys who surpassed him, and tries not to feel regret. (But Tanaka ... _Tanaka_ has his place, and Chikara never realised the guy had that much fire and light inside of him because in the early days, he’d only been _loud_.)

When Suga says ‘Let’s Go’, Ennoshita doesn’t even think but follows the Vice Captain onto the court. He is struck by the dark, at how Karasuno’s mood is blacker than the shirts they wear, how even Hinata and Nishinoya are no longer balls of light and sunshine, but grey matter, still and suffering. How even their tears are off-white and dull.

Seijou now have the light, and there’s no contrast, no grey, just bright, white and silver, sunlight bursting through a mass of clouds illuminating their smiles. And Seijou’s tears glimmer gold.

 

 

Ryuu and Noya chatter too much. He gets stern because he knows it’s expected of him. They want to go to Tokyo, and he wants them there. Even if Ryuu not making it means Chikara will get a chance, he wants _everyone_ there. So they can connect. So he can be around them. Because if Chikara spends more time with Ryuu and Noya, talking rather than observing, he might understand a few things about them.  He might understand, for instance, why they’re so obsessed with Shimizu-san.

“Because she’s beautiful,” Noya sighs.

“A g-g-goddess who graces us with her presence,” Tanaka adds.

Chikara raises one eyebrow and states the opinion that if Tanaka could wax that poetically about the book they’re studying and not about the Manager, then he’d have a much better chance of making the trip.

“How come you can talk to her, Chikara-san?” Tanaka demands. “I only have to look at her, to sense her, and my tongue trips me up.”

Shrugging, Chikara doles out the pens and practise papers. “She’s ... um ... nice.”

“NICE?  NICE!” the pair of them roar, looking furious.

“Uh ...” He backpedals. “I suppose being on the sidelines has given me more of an opportunity to see what she’s like,” he says at last.

Maybe that’s true. He’s not intimidated by Shimizu Kiyoko, not like they seem to be. She _is_ a beautiful girl, one with a perfect symmetrical face (apart from the beauty mark) but it isn’t beauty per se that appeals to him.  _His_ aesthetic, he thinks, is contrast.  

(Ryuu’s sister has contrast in spades. Blonde choppy hair, a smile and a scowl that light a room and charisma screaming ‘look at me’. And yet, he wonders idly, Saeko-Neesan doesn’t make his breath hitch, doesn’t make him behave like an idiot whenever she saunters into a room, and he certainly feels nothing more for her than gratitude because she makes Ryuu squirm and lightens Noya to the point where he’ll concentrate again.)

The thing about beauty, Chikara’s worked out, is that after a while it becomes the same as everything else. Shimizu-san will always be beautiful, but ... but ... it’s like staring at your reflection in a mirror, stare for too long and the face becomes a blur. _Every_ face becomes a fuzz of colours, no longer delineated - smudged. Capturing the moment before it becomes a blur is why he carries a camera, why film is important to him. Permanence rather than transience becomes his mantra. An obsession to record the contrast.

***

 

Then Chikara sees _him_.

And he knows with utter certainty that everything he’d previously _declaimed_ about beauty, ugliness, lines and smudges is a lie.

He has to be mistaken. It’s a trick of the light, someone has cast shadows where there should be none, for the planes of the face currently assessing Karasuno from the other side of the net are too angled, too sharp, too perfect and beautiful to be real.

 _I want to light you._  

The thought jolts him out of his reverie, and he twitches his head, scared he’s shared the sentiment out loud. But Kinnoshita’s watching the match, cheering Narita on, so Chikara’s safe.

For now.

The trouble is, the Fukurodani Setter _is_ beautiful. There is no getting away from that, not even when he’s sweaty from a match, when he’s concentrating hard, when his mouth elongates into an oval as he urges his Ace on.

Some people, he knows, look better on camera full face, while others are better in profile. He remembers his film studies mentor telling him stories of Hollywood greats, how the industry in its early days developed lights to suggest mood, to create beauty. How Greta Garbo was known as the world’s most beautiful woman because it was impossible to light her badly.

The Setter, like Garbo, has no bad angle.

_I want to light you._

But wanting and doing are two different things and Chikara knows it can never happen.

There are no real smiles, except around the Setter’s eyes, slanting eyes, heavy-lidded like Chikara’s, but no one could mistake his expression for sleepiness. He doesn’t have the skills of a Kageyama or an Oikawa, but he has a confidence, and assuredness,  a belief in his own worth on court that Chikara’s never been able to muster.

He enters the fray and fumbles, too transfixed by cheekbones and lazy lidded eyes, by a mess of hair, and long limbs. No one notices, or maybe they do, but they assume Ennoshita-kun is suffering the same way as them, outclassed by a superior side and an Ace whose power is frightening.

While he completes his lap of flying falls, the Setter is sitting on the sidelines, swigging water from a bottle. His teammates are congratulating the Ace, but he’s silent, intense, as his eyes slide from his team, to their next opponent before finally resting on the team they’ve just beaten. Chikara catches him looking, then with burning cheeks he gets to his feet, pulling down the shirt that had ridden halfway up his torso. When he dares to look back, the Setter’s face is covered with a towel.

 

Later that evening, after cleaning his teeth, scrubbing so hard his gums bleed, Chikara concentrates on his reflection. He sucks in his cheeks, wondering if that would make him more interesting to look at. He opens his eyes wider, flicks his hair off his face, tries a scowl, practises a smile, assumes a deadpan expression, gurns, winks, smirks and pouts, but there’s no permanent change. His face settles back into the blur of nothing, putty features, malleable but ultimately forgettable.

 

***

_Akaashi Keiji._

He’s found a volleyball magazine featuring the High School teams that made it to Nationals. There’s a feature about their Ace, and Chikara can understand why because he’s a personality. He has charisma, loud and brash, roaring his presence to everyone on court.

There’s a footnote about their Setter, and a small photograph. The magazine mentions that Akaashi Keiji has the personality to cope with fluctuating moods. He’s calm, he’s unflappable, and rides the ebb and flow of each game with ease.

He’s a second-year like Chikara, who seems to have a special relationship with their Ace. Chikara’s unsurprised. Bokuto draws people to him, while he stands on the sidelines, usually ignored.

His fingers trace the snapshot. Even small, even in the middle of a game, even sweating, Akaashi Keiji is beautiful and Chikara aches to light him.

***

 

“K-Karasuno, yes?”

“P-Pardon.” Chikara glances up from his plate of food to find he’s looking straight into a pair of slanting, almost black eyes staring down at him.

“Uh ...” He’s shuffling on his feet a little, then gives a smile. “You’re from Karasuno, aren’t you?  I noticed you that first day when you were doing the penalty. Uh ... Sorry.”

 _What is he sorry for?_ “Yes, I’m from Karasuno. And you’re ... you’re Akaashi Keiji, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” The boy laughs, the sound sticking a touch in his throat, but the smile becomes a little wider. “How did you know?”

He could have lied, said he’d heard someone use his name, but Chikara isn’t good at lying when it matters, knowing he’ll blush and stutter instead, so picking up his glass of juice, he says, “I saw you in a volleyball magazine.”

“Oh.” And now _he_ ’s blushing. “The feature about Bokuto. That was a few months ago. You’re very ... um ... methodical in your research.”

“Yes.” It’s all he can think of to say, and he’s wondering why Akaashi’s still standing there because Chikara’s awkward and not the least welcoming. He swallows, but his throat is dry so he glugs at the juice, then splutters when it goes down the wrong way. And again he’s gauche and wishing he was on the sidelines, behind a lens, anywhere but here and confronted with this perfect face.

He’s being thumped on the back, a flat palm patting him whilst he coughs out the rest of the juice, now spurting out of his nose. And then, he’s handed a napkin, and after wiping his nose and mouth and eyes, Chikara looks up to say thank you, only to find Akaashi’s joined him on the step and is chewing away at a piece of steak.

“I don’t know _your_ name,” he says. “Only your team. And the position you play. Oh, and I saw that play where that Russian guy’s spike caught your cheek. Did that hurt?”

“Uh...” His mind is a blur. What play? What spike? What Russian guy?  Oh, Lev, he supposed. “I can’t honestly remember. I expect it did at the time.”

“And your name?” he prompts again.

“Ennoshita Chikara,” he supplies. Close up, Akaashi Keiji is just as beautiful. He has hollows in his cheeks and smudged purple circles under his eyes. There’s also a faint bump on his nose, which takes away from the symmetry, but adds to the interest. To the contrast.

“Ennoshita Chikara.” Akaashi repeats, “And you take pictures, don’t you?”

“Uh ... yes, but doesn’t everyone,” Chikara replies, indicating Kuroo and Bokuto who are snatching up phones and taking selfies, proclaiming them souvenirs for everyone.

“Proper photos,” Akaashi qualifies. “I’ve seen you with your camera, in the mornings.”

“Really?” He’s surprised because it had been very early in the morning, when he’d woken and not wanted to disturb the others. “I never saw you.”

“I didn’t think you wanted to be disturbed,” Akaashi said, grimacing when Bokuto starts to holler his name. “I imagine, like me, you relish the quiet times.”

“AKAASHI, TAKE A PHOTO OF ME AND KUROO. PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE?”

“Oh, gods, save me from idiots,” Akaashi mutters in exasperation. “I’d like one meal in peace.” But he gets to his feet, and takes a step towards Bokuto, and Chikara realises that if he doesn’t speak now, he’ll have lost his chance. Chance at what, he doesn’t know, but he can’t stay on the sidelines all his life.

“Hey, Akaashi -san, will you-”

Akaashi turns. He’s shaking his head as Kuroo joins in the yelling for attention. “Excuse me, I need to deal with them, but ... um ... please, will you stay where you are? I’d like to ...um ... talk to you some more. I-if that’s all right.”

Akaashi Keiji is as beautiful to Chikara as a chiaroscuro. And for all his deadpan composure, it is Akaashi who is blushing, when Chikara smiles and says that yes, he’ll wait for him.


End file.
